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In this fifth demo, of the BusinessObjects tools, we look at the BI Launchpad and provide an 11 minutes demo on features such as BI workspaces, Public folders, search, sharing reports, favorites and much more. We also look at how Crystal Reports, WebI, Analysis and Dashboards are accessed in this unifying interface.

By Dr. Berg

Background

There are many ways to publish and share the BusinessObjects work products. You can link it in SAP Portals, SharePoint, a dedicated web site, build your own report center, use the ‘old’ InfoView, or you can take the next step and implement the BusinessObjects BI Launchpad.

This is a tool that allows you to access reports, share results, comment, organize and publish to others your findings regardless of the tool you used. You can even send reports to other user’s in-boxes, or to departmental shared ‘public folders’.

It also allows you to organize your workspace with WebI reports, Crystal reports and all the other BI tools in a single location (one screen), thereby removing the need to toggle between reports and have multiple log-ons and ‘interfaces’. This is really cool….

For most BusinessObjects customers with Powerusers and authors, I recommend the BI Launchpad instead of individual ‘spaces’ on web portals (you can do both if you need to). The launchpad also allows for modules and composite modules where you can ‘merge’ results and make comments in one location, removing the need for lengthy emails. So, let us take a look...

DEMO - BI 4.0 – The BI Launchpad

In this demo we take a look at the tool from a functionality standpoint to illustrate how a power user may want to use the tool.

Tool Summary

To keep things in perspective, below is a summary chart to see what each tool is intended for, who should be doing the development and the core capabilities. This is by nature subjective, but should provide some basic comparison of the tools.

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